STILL not done with school!! helpppppp

I’m so sorry for your losses. 🙁

We’ve been homeschooling for 11 years now, starting with Kindergarten for my firstborn. Since we started, we’ve had three more children (total of five), we’ve moved cross-country five times, and I’ve lost my grandmother and a brother.

What my children have taught me over the years is that they keep learning even when I stop teaching. My younger children have been teaching me that better-late-than-early is a valid philosophy. Children don’t get “behind” just because they start later.

My seven year old does few formal lessons. We all take a turn reading to him, he’s still learning to read, and he does math occasionally. Some of my older boys have gotten “behind” in math before, and then suddenly, they complete a semester’s worth of work in two weeks.

I would certainly encourage anyone to avoid programs that she considers “drudgery.” There are so many ways, so many programs, which teach math thoroughly without drudgery that I just can’t understand why anyone would choose the drudgery.  It’s a balancing act sometimes, I admit, between fun-without-learning and drudgery-with-learning, but it can be done, and, at at that age, very easily. I have one child so far who hates math, and he’s the only one who’s ever used drill-and-kill programs. The others love math, and they understand it equally well, considering the difference in ages. Short of asking God in Heaven, there’s no way of knowing whether or not that’s a coincidence. However, I can say without reservation that it’s easier to teach facts once we’ve fostered a love for a subject in a child than it is to foster a love for a subject in a child who’s only been exposed to facts and drills.